Adaptive Electronics:

The development of the transistor enabled an amazing array of technology and devices which has dramatically impacted all aspects of life in modern societies. While work continues developing smaller, more efficient, faster, and higher power transistors, radical new device configurations are appearing which offer potential for dramatic departure from current device configurations and styles of operation. These new devices may enable higher performance for traditional metrics (e.g., energy consumption per operation), or may allow entirely new functionalities (e.g., neuroplasticity). Here, we focus on one class of materials: non-volatile resistance switches. These generally take a metal-insulator-metal configuration, and operate by one of a number of mechanisms which (either locally or uniformly) changes the conductivity between the two electrodes. Our interests here focus on two areas:

Identification of switching mechanisms. Different materials systems result from fundamentally different physical processes. The nature of these processes inevitably impacts device behavior.

Identification of intrinsic materials-focused sources of device variability. Currently, we are focused on the role of grain boundaries in the transport process.